MORE than half the 40,000 tickets for this year’s Rewind Festival in Henley were snapped within days of going on sale.

The event’s website went down for about two hours on Friday due to the demand when the tickets were made available at 9am.

Festival founder David Heartfield, who lives in Rotherfield Greys, said: “The sheer number of people on the website crashed it.

“I am still trying to find out exactly how many but at the moment I can only find out how many managed to get on it.

“It went down for a couple of hours but it is always refreshing to see that many people interested in coming.

“More than 20,000 tickets were sold on the opening weekend, which shows Rewind is more popular than ever so we must be doing something right.”

The Boomtown Rats will be headlining this year’s event, which takes place on Temple Island Meadows on the weekend of August 16 and 17. Other stars include Jason Donovan, Level 42, UB40, Rick Astley and Jimmy Somerville.

Mr Heartfield said: “We spend months talking to the artists as it is all about who is available.

“There are some acts who may not be working and there are others that we leap on, such as Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey who will be doing his first concert in 27 years.”

New for this year will also be a roller disco with other attractions to be announced.